Category: Genre

Categories
2009 Mystery

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a delightful cozy mystery. The book is set in a small English village in the 1950s and the story begins with 10-year-old Flavia de Luce finding a dead snipe on her doorstep. The bird has a postage stamp impaled on its beak and her father’s reaction to the discovery implies that this is a warning of worse to come. His fears are confirmed when a man is found dying in a cucumber patch.

Flavia de Luce is a budding chemist with access to a laboratory in her country house. She enjoys learning about poisons and other chemical reactions – I loved her! She was such a wonderful, quirky character and I liked reading about the preparation and effects of various poisons. She wasn’t entirely believable as a ten-year-old, but then much of the plot was a bit far fetched so I don’t think realism is the key aim of this book!

“I wonder, Flavia,” Inspector Hewitt said, stepping gingerly into the cucumbers, “if you might ask someone to organize some tea?”
He must have seen the look on my face.
“We’ve had rather an early start this morning. Do you think you could manage to rustle something up?”
So that was it. As at a birth, so at a death. Without so much as a kiss-me-quick-and-mind-the-marmalade, the only female in sight is enlisted to trot off, and see that the water is boiled. Rustle something up, indeed! What did he take me for, some kind of cowboy?

The plot was fast paced and entertaining. It needed little concentration – I read much of it on a train journey, a time when I find the noise prevents me from reading anything too deep. The ending wasn’t earth-shattering, but the light mystery was well resolved.

Overall I enjoyed my journey back into the charming life of 1950s England and while I won’t be rushing out to buy the next in the series (The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag ) I’m sure I’ll get round to it at some point.

Did you enjoy The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie?

Which is your favourite cozy mystery?

Categories
1980s Classics

Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter

I hadn’t read any Angela Carter, so when I saw that Claire was creating a whole month dedicated to celebrating her work I decided it was time to give Angela Carter a try.

Nights at the Circus centres on Fevvers, an extraordinary character who claims she was hatched from an egg. During an interview she explains that she was a normal child until she hit puberty, when wings grew on her back. Fevvers is a famous circus performer and one of the most vivid characters I have ever read. Raised in a brothel, with a distinctive Cockney accent, her presence just leaps from the page – I loved her!

Her voice. It was as if Walser had become a prisoner of her voice, her cavernous, sombre voice, a voice made for shouting about the tempest, her voice of a celestial fishwife. Musical as it strangely was, yet not a voice for singing with; it comprised discords, her scale contained twelve tones. Her voice, with its warped, homely, Cockney vowels and random aspirates. Her dark, rusty, dipping, swooping voice, imperious as a siren’s.

Unfortunately the rest of the book didn’t capture my imagination in the same way. I’m not a big fan of magical realism and so its heavy presence in the book wasn’t a positive for me.

The book also contained little plot. Lots of things happened, but there was never that forward momentum compelling me to read on – it was more like reading several individual scenes instead of one connected story. I had hoped that everything would be brought together at the end, but instead I found the last page very irriating – I think I just lack Angela Carter’s sense of humor!

I’m really pleased that I read this book, as I think it is an important novel that has influenced many other authors, but I’ll have to leave all the Angela Carter promotion to Claire! 

Highly recommeded to fans of magical realism.

 

Most people seem to love this book, so I’ll leave you to have a look at some wonderful reviews:

 ….a dizzying and magical journey… Things Mean a Lot

Carter’s style is scandalously generous with brilliant descriptions, stunning word portraits that pack every event out with jewel-bright glimpses into the different layers of her fictional world. Tales from the Reading Room

Do you love Angela Carter’s books?

Do you enjoy magical realism?

Categories
2008 Memoirs

My Father’s Paradise – Ariel Sabar

Winner of National Book Critics Circle Award: Best Biography 2008

I bought this book after reading Violet’s review. I don’t read much non-fiction, but this one sounded too good to miss! 

My Father’s Paradise is written by journalist, Ariel Sabar, who decides to use his investigative skills to trace the history of his father, a man born in a remote part of Kurdish Iraq. His father is one of the last native speakers of neo-aramaic, an ancient language which has almost disappeared due to population migration. Ariel Sabar decides to do everything he can to record the language and traditions of his ancestors, before they are lost forever.

The start of the book reads almost like fiction, telling the story of his father’s life growing up in a small village. I loved this section! In many ways I wish the whole book had continued in this style (perhaps because I prefer to read fiction), but also because I found the sense of community in the village heart warming. I could feel Ariel’s love for the traditions shining through the text.

As time passes the book starts to bring in more historical facts, explaining the political situation in Iraq and why his father, a Kurdish Jew, had to flee to Israel. Some parts of the book book felt a bit dry, but in reality I needed these facts to fully understand what was happening.

The book then went on to describe their life in America and how they set to work recording the language and folklore of the Kurdish Jews. His father became a famous professor, internationally renowned for his work on aramaic text. It was amazing to see how much one man’s life had changed, but I found I was far more interested in his early life than his work in the University. I think this is summed up nicely by the words of Ariel’s father:

The more a society advances in a technical and material way, the more its people grow complicated and distant from one another.

Overall, this was a fascinating book but I wish Ariel Sabar would write another one, focusing only on life in 1930s Iraq.

If you’d like to learn more about this book then I recommend that you watch this Interview with Ariel Sabar.

Categories
2010 Historical Fiction Orange Prize

The Long Song – Andrea Levy

 Long listed for Orange Prize 2010 

The Long Song is set on Jamaica and follows July, a young slave girl, during the last few years of slavery and after she is granted freedom. 

The book is very different in style to Andrea Levy’s last book, Orange Prize winning Small Island, but I think they are both good in their own way. 

Much of the speech in The Long Song is written in Jamaican dialect, which adds atmosphere to the book. I think this would be even better on audio, as I’m sure my inner mind doesn’t quite do it justice! It isn’t hard to understand the dialect, in fact the whole book is quick and easy to read. I felt that this was actually one of the negatives of the book – it was so light that it seemed to skim over some very important scenes. The plot was quite simple, but the book covered a reasonably large chunk of time. This speed of events meant that I didn’t fully connect with July or understand which emotions she was experiencing. 

The narrator, July, frequently addresses the reader of the book, adding references to her present day life. 

Reader, my son tells me that this is too indelicate a commencement of any tale. Please pardon me, but your storyteller is a woman possessed of a forthright tongue and a little ink. 

Having read a few other reviews I’ve discovered that this style seems to annoy some people, but I found it a refreshing change to the similarity of many books. 

Overall, it was a light, entertaining read, but I have heard the amazing way Andrea Levy narrates her books and so I recommend getting the audio version of The Long Song.

Did you enjoy The Long Song?

Do you think it will make it onto the Orange short list tomorrow?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Thriller

Hurting Distance – Sophie Hannah

  

Long listed for the 2008 Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Little Face was one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read, so I was very keen to try another one of Sophie Hannah’s books. Hurting Distance is the second book in series. I think you can understand it without having read the first, but you would miss out on a few of the small plot lines that continue from one book to the next. If you want to follow the lives of the police officers then I recommend that you read them in order.

Hurting Distance is much darker than Little Face. The whole book revolves around a serial rapist, so it is quite disturbing in places. The story is told through the eyes of Naomi who was raped three years ago and didn’t report the crime. Robert, her lover, vanishes but the police don’t believe it is worth investigating. In a desperate attempt to get them to take her seriously Naomi accuses Robert of rape, using the details of the crime that was committed against her all those years ago.

The book then became a fast paced investigation, packed with unexpected twists and turns. There were a few too many unlikely coincidences for my liking, but on the whole it was an enjoyable read.

I don’t think it was quite as good as Little Face, but I remain a big fan of Sophie Hannah and look forward to reading the rest of her books.

I was totally gripped. Novel Insights

Despite its plot implausibilities, HURTING DISTANCE is a gripping tale.  Euro Crime

There is suspense and a lot of twists without it being over complicated….. Savidge Reads

Sophie Hannah’s new book A Room Swept White was released earlier this year and she has recently announced that her books are being adapted for television – I can’t wait!

Have you read any of Sophie Hannah’s books?

Which one did you enjoy the most?

Categories
2009 Historical Fiction Orange Prize

Small Wars – Sadie Jones

 Long listed for the Orange Prize 2010

I enjoyed Sadie Jones’ last novel, The Outcast, to some extent, but found the ending to be a bit of an anti-climax. When I saw her latest book had made the Orange long list I decided to give her another try.

Small Wars is set on Cyprus during the 1950s Emergency, a time when the British defended Cyprus against a colony of Cypriots determined to form a union with Greece. The book follows Hal, a young British soldier who is posted to Cyprus. He brings his wife and daughters with him, but their relationship is put under pressure by the fear of violence.

I’m afraid I wasn’t a big fan of Small Wars. The pace of the book was quite slow and there were several long, meandering sections where I began to lose interest. The writing was simple and easy to read, but this simplicity meant that the real horror of some situations wasn’t adequately described:

The people were made to lie down on the floor of the trucks, because there were so many of them, and if the soldiers made them lie down, they could be layered to make room. There were reports of suffocation from this stacking of live bodies, but later, the British, investigating, found no bodies.

In the hands of a different author that same scene could have been very hard to read. I can imagine the fear of those poor people, but reading the above passage provoked no emotion in me. The same is true for much of the book – there were some terrible events, but they were rushed over and so the horror could be largely ignored.

The main theme of Small Wars was the way war can affect relationships. The book concentrated on characterisation rather than plot; this gentle observation of the feelings will be of interest to some, but I’m afraid it was all too quiet for me.

Recommended to those who want to read about war in a quiet, gentle way.

What others had to say:

It’s a complex study, yet it’s easy to read and progresses very quickly!  S Krishna’s Books

 ….notable for its psychological depth and characterizations. California Literary Review

 ….this follow-up shows that she is no one-hit wonder. Times Online

Have you read The Outcast or Small Wars?

Do you think this book has a chance at making the Orange short list?